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Sauce: affordable Bordeaux

The proprietors of the famous Bordeaux châteaux are agonising over what to charge - or what they can get away with - for their most recent vintage, 2007. They always put their red wines on the marketen primeur (ie, when they are still in barrels in the cellars in the spring/summer following the vintage). Apart from doing wonders for their cash flow, the idea is that buyers who splash out at this stage get the wines cheaper than they would later. This year, however, setting prices is peculiarly difficult.

For one thing, it's a mediocre vintage. Remember the British summer, or lack of it? It was the same in Bordeaux. A sunny September helped, but, even so, few wines are better than modestly charming and fewer still are expected to be long-lived. With the added woes of a wobbly global economy and a strong euro, one might reasonably expect the prices of